The rants have stopped but the hits keep on coming. Sorry to be a senile blogg !
Okay, so something is in the offing for me with a budding fleet of Melges on my doorstep (4 maybe 5 out this year locally) and talk of laser forcing the importer to sell SB3s.
The SB3 is ideal really for many different smaller sailing nations around europe because.
1) it is an easy fleet to build- small investment as second OD boat, company boat, hire fleet or even student syndicates ! Burdgeoning second hand market too.
2) it is trailerable and hireable: so international, top level sailing is at hand within a 5 hour trip basically to the UK for now.
3) It is fun enough for most IRC slugger sailers while not scaring them - you can sail 4 so freinds and family can come out. Further to it being an "anti melges" like the Cork 1720 its big sister, this means crews can concentrate on getting their jobs right and not hiking like rag dolls and boom dodging acrobatically.
4) with a big UK fleet and regional championships, and Minorca etc owning some, you can get a feel for very tactical competition quickly because of the learning/ effort ratio is really good, unlike a melges or many hiking boats.
5) dinghy sailors will take to it like water off a ducks back: they are the big reserve in many areas with OD either being destroyed by a plethora of stupid fast twitchy assymetrics or being like here, stuck with boring old designs.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Monday, August 15, 2011
Sailing the year out and the itchy feet feeling
Donned my fabulous Musto goretex sailing shorts yesterday on og all things a walk in the woods on a warm, showery day. Very comfortable and dry, while also standing up to twigs sitting on a rock.
Got me thinking how much more useful they are on a sunny day, top of force 4 with spray coming over the decks. Then of course there popped up the Fastnet from 'seilas' magazine on the electric facebook contraption. A fleet tracker no doubt.
So within a couple of minutes my lacklustre attitude to the whole sailing thang turned to a renewed bout of youthful enthusiasm. Not just for the glorious days with sunshine and the best ever start, but the plateau of training and the often slow learning curve. Even the frustrations of losing badly, and the humble pie of the resulting post-race-analysis and debrief ( as if they really happen so often!). Yeah, even bad days are seen through rose tinted spectacles once more!
If I have issues with sailing this year, then they are the self same issues I had after my first year or so: finding the right boat to crew on or getting my own boat again. So many teams are static even stagnant, good potential helms want someone who blindly agrees and they can nurture up ( with cleavage prefered) and basically I am left waiting for a new Harold Hood to come back into the fray with a new boat and need for good crew. Even with Odyssey I was plateauing to be honest, but the long slow plains are a place to be relished as you trek along the learning curve waiting for the next eldorado of opportunity, challenge and experience to whisk you up by the ankles to a higher plain.
It is also about ambition and new opportunity: do I really have ambition to varnish all winter a boat I am not sure is actually up to scratch in the local OD fleet of gentlemans 4 knoters?
Well yeah ambition, before you snuff it, what races to do? What to acheive with sailing?
Well I have pretty limitied ambitions but at least one is rekindled here again: The fastnet in a seriously fast mono like a TP52 or perhaps totally cheating on a multihull? Hiking out on a Mumm 36 may have seemed like earning my spurs 12 years ago when I did ISORA, but now the whole prospect of sailing the waterlegnth speed plus 1 knot for such craft is unappealing.
What else then? Well probably to put together a Norwegian challenge for ...the IRC trophy in West Highland Week. ALso later on to enter my own boat: maybe starting at a Benetub 21.7 and ending up with an X332 or the like.
To own an SB3 and compete in the big fleets in the UK.
Also then the big one, the big challenge that is: to win a national championship in a one design and attend the worlds in the Platu 25 design.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Year Out and Those Who Never Come Back....
I was just thinking back about all the truly great amateur sailors I have had the pleasure of sailing with, and how much I'd like to put them all together as a dream crew with my Wookie pal Big Andy on main to keep me entertained.
Then I realised that most of them don't sail or otherwise just potter about. Nothing serious.
Me, well I tell myself I am just taking a year out, but...?
Now in fact a couple of these guys I think of were actually "pros" in that one worked for North Sails Seattle and the other is actually a first engineer on a tanker. These are the two guys, simon and steve you know you who are, who I learned absolutely most from in sailing. While I'm running the credits, the irish national j24 coach, Brian Mathews taught me some fine polished skills and tricks while sailing on a boat which has come to reside on Oslo Fjord: the IMX 38 "Braveheart".
However, good people give up. Really, really great sailors throw in the towel. Why?
The main obvious reason is the combination of crews and owners. You never quite seem to get the right boat , The Right Owner and The Right Team.
The fact is that most people who can afford a forty foot racer-cruiser are either a bit dull (surgeons, lawyers, actuaries) and so lack that killer instinct, or they are egotists ( entrepreneurs, divisional directors, sales managers) who frankly can't run a team without control freaking. They manage their working life teams on fear and false promises and when it comes to a true team sport like sailing, they are the weakest link.
Then there are the bitchy crews, the lazy crews, the over-boozed crews, the overly serious crews, stupid individuals who can't be fired, deck fluff-teasing females, owners wives-sons-daughters. Crews which implode on their own egos and unfullfilled expectations. Crews which are fully disfucntional in simple tasks. Crews who try and do each others jobs and shout out the action the next man has just started to do. Crews who get sacked for drinking too much and doing pranks or violent misdemeanors. Crews who are no good and are not interested in admiting their wrongs and learning. Also of course crews that disintegrate due to pure lack of interest.
Once in a while you get a really good team dynamic or at least an atnagonism which gives tension and drive in the will to win. Every tack is a formality, each gybe is coordinated with eyes fixed on the job and hardly a word uttered. Small mistakes are spotted really quickly and corrected seamlessly. Information flows from the gunwhale back over and decisions are made upon this, or after respectful further requests for advice from the rail. Everyone gives 110% and the boat wins, the sails are stowed neatly and the boat is ready for the night's festivities before even a single beer can is breached.
More often though, great teams in the forming are snuffed out by owners, usually when they start bringing "management consultants" on board : transom twitterers, back seat team drivers. Or perhaps the owner decides to bump someone out a job, or demands that everybody does all the regattas or drop out.
Quite often good individuals gravitate towards a free meal ticket- literally: a rich owner who puts crew dinners and lubrication through his companies. The main catalyst here is often that sailmakers stick to these owners like a cheap suit, and supply a stream of the best dinghy sailors and some heavy rail meat in the knowledge all repairs, tweaks and extra sails will be bought from them.
It is pretty rare that the rich bother with the risk of sailing one design: they have cash to splash, and like sailing in their own wind, tweaking the boat and blaming the handicap for the conditions when it goes down the pan on a bad call.
So many truly great sailors, and myself being a reasonable sailor, give up because of one or many of these reasons. It becomes very clear to them that these is not really a space on a boat they would want to sail on! The club-cliques are a bit afraid of lurking "better" sailors or have had their egos bruised, or have dismissed them as unruly trouble makers ( like me and some others). We end up with no one worth sailing with, until we get our own boats. My current club is just like this: there are no places apart from on the boats which are not worth sailing on in the otherwise tight OD fleet.
To remedy this situation there needs to be more of a methodological, structured coaching and training in the sport. The better clubs, independent of their size, should adopt national certification for crews and team building or rather teaching in what a good team dynamic is. More fundamental, although this may seem ipso facto a part of this process, opening sailors minds up to being on a learning curve that never ends. Owners and many crews need to learn how to learn!
Clubs tend to conspire to put all their efforts into youth sailing: this provides after all free baby sitting for endless hours for many brat spawn of the worthy club members. It provides some sailing minded teenagers to crew on larger boats, but rather the most of these "youff" drop out when they discover Alco Pops and necking and endless hours of tedium with 900 "friends" on facebook. Youth programmes are then largely counter productive for the sport and really the broad base of the pyramid suddenly becomes so sharp in getting into the squads and coaching that clubs should put a lot less effort into them, or rather focus on a smaller number of young sailors.
Clubs should spend more time and money on their long suffering adult members and especially those boat owners new to sailing, with there a focus on one design sailing. Indeed it may need to be within the OD class association to organise this, or become a virtual on-line sailing club such they can affiliate to the national bodies and get funding.
"ISO 9000 "for a boat is not actually a bad thing at all: it would mean as crew you could turn up and do your job within some tight boundaries, and the same goes for the reverse expectations for owners. At the level I used to sail at, cat 3 or whatever with some Cat 2 sailors, then this is virtaully what happens anyway: you can throw a team together even on the day and get results. If I were to go out tomorrow I would be so rusty this woudln't work at all!
I think these type of organised coaching efforts in the sport at a local level would attract back sailors like me ( year out- two years out?? Five years out?) and also leave less to chance: On the clyde in the 80s and 90s we had some fantastic OD sailing: FF; Pipers; IODs; Sonatas; 1720s; Smegma 33s and even an emergent 38 fleet. The whole bendytub, Elan / X332 IRC optimised thing blew it all to bits when everyone went cheque book racing and no one really wanted OD. The money got sucked up into property, the rich got richer, the middle class got less affluent, and then this pyramid selling sprung recession took it all away. I think the glimmer of hope for the clyde is the bloody SB3 and the established FFs and pipers. People can have their cruisers for WHW.
Ranting done !
Then I realised that most of them don't sail or otherwise just potter about. Nothing serious.
Me, well I tell myself I am just taking a year out, but...?
Now in fact a couple of these guys I think of were actually "pros" in that one worked for North Sails Seattle and the other is actually a first engineer on a tanker. These are the two guys, simon and steve you know you who are, who I learned absolutely most from in sailing. While I'm running the credits, the irish national j24 coach, Brian Mathews taught me some fine polished skills and tricks while sailing on a boat which has come to reside on Oslo Fjord: the IMX 38 "Braveheart".
However, good people give up. Really, really great sailors throw in the towel. Why?
The main obvious reason is the combination of crews and owners. You never quite seem to get the right boat , The Right Owner and The Right Team.
The fact is that most people who can afford a forty foot racer-cruiser are either a bit dull (surgeons, lawyers, actuaries) and so lack that killer instinct, or they are egotists ( entrepreneurs, divisional directors, sales managers) who frankly can't run a team without control freaking. They manage their working life teams on fear and false promises and when it comes to a true team sport like sailing, they are the weakest link.
Then there are the bitchy crews, the lazy crews, the over-boozed crews, the overly serious crews, stupid individuals who can't be fired, deck fluff-teasing females, owners wives-sons-daughters. Crews which implode on their own egos and unfullfilled expectations. Crews which are fully disfucntional in simple tasks. Crews who try and do each others jobs and shout out the action the next man has just started to do. Crews who get sacked for drinking too much and doing pranks or violent misdemeanors. Crews who are no good and are not interested in admiting their wrongs and learning. Also of course crews that disintegrate due to pure lack of interest.
Once in a while you get a really good team dynamic or at least an atnagonism which gives tension and drive in the will to win. Every tack is a formality, each gybe is coordinated with eyes fixed on the job and hardly a word uttered. Small mistakes are spotted really quickly and corrected seamlessly. Information flows from the gunwhale back over and decisions are made upon this, or after respectful further requests for advice from the rail. Everyone gives 110% and the boat wins, the sails are stowed neatly and the boat is ready for the night's festivities before even a single beer can is breached.
More often though, great teams in the forming are snuffed out by owners, usually when they start bringing "management consultants" on board : transom twitterers, back seat team drivers. Or perhaps the owner decides to bump someone out a job, or demands that everybody does all the regattas or drop out.
Quite often good individuals gravitate towards a free meal ticket- literally: a rich owner who puts crew dinners and lubrication through his companies. The main catalyst here is often that sailmakers stick to these owners like a cheap suit, and supply a stream of the best dinghy sailors and some heavy rail meat in the knowledge all repairs, tweaks and extra sails will be bought from them.
It is pretty rare that the rich bother with the risk of sailing one design: they have cash to splash, and like sailing in their own wind, tweaking the boat and blaming the handicap for the conditions when it goes down the pan on a bad call.
So many truly great sailors, and myself being a reasonable sailor, give up because of one or many of these reasons. It becomes very clear to them that these is not really a space on a boat they would want to sail on! The club-cliques are a bit afraid of lurking "better" sailors or have had their egos bruised, or have dismissed them as unruly trouble makers ( like me and some others). We end up with no one worth sailing with, until we get our own boats. My current club is just like this: there are no places apart from on the boats which are not worth sailing on in the otherwise tight OD fleet.
To remedy this situation there needs to be more of a methodological, structured coaching and training in the sport. The better clubs, independent of their size, should adopt national certification for crews and team building or rather teaching in what a good team dynamic is. More fundamental, although this may seem ipso facto a part of this process, opening sailors minds up to being on a learning curve that never ends. Owners and many crews need to learn how to learn!
Clubs tend to conspire to put all their efforts into youth sailing: this provides after all free baby sitting for endless hours for many brat spawn of the worthy club members. It provides some sailing minded teenagers to crew on larger boats, but rather the most of these "youff" drop out when they discover Alco Pops and necking and endless hours of tedium with 900 "friends" on facebook. Youth programmes are then largely counter productive for the sport and really the broad base of the pyramid suddenly becomes so sharp in getting into the squads and coaching that clubs should put a lot less effort into them, or rather focus on a smaller number of young sailors.
Clubs should spend more time and money on their long suffering adult members and especially those boat owners new to sailing, with there a focus on one design sailing. Indeed it may need to be within the OD class association to organise this, or become a virtual on-line sailing club such they can affiliate to the national bodies and get funding.
"ISO 9000 "for a boat is not actually a bad thing at all: it would mean as crew you could turn up and do your job within some tight boundaries, and the same goes for the reverse expectations for owners. At the level I used to sail at, cat 3 or whatever with some Cat 2 sailors, then this is virtaully what happens anyway: you can throw a team together even on the day and get results. If I were to go out tomorrow I would be so rusty this woudln't work at all!
I think these type of organised coaching efforts in the sport at a local level would attract back sailors like me ( year out- two years out?? Five years out?) and also leave less to chance: On the clyde in the 80s and 90s we had some fantastic OD sailing: FF; Pipers; IODs; Sonatas; 1720s; Smegma 33s and even an emergent 38 fleet. The whole bendytub, Elan / X332 IRC optimised thing blew it all to bits when everyone went cheque book racing and no one really wanted OD. The money got sucked up into property, the rich got richer, the middle class got less affluent, and then this pyramid selling sprung recession took it all away. I think the glimmer of hope for the clyde is the bloody SB3 and the established FFs and pipers. People can have their cruisers for WHW.
Ranting done !
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Calories !
This year is indeed going to be my year out. 'T' called on sailing. I think everyone should take time out otherwise it all does become 'another day at the office' . <br> i am taking a year out for the reason of potential jadedness with the slow ood boats here, but also two personal reaons if you like. <br> firstly this winter i actually lost some weight! This trending will just be a blip if i do the series, some weekend events, and of course all the time teaching at the sailing school . Now i can be out on my bike or up in the hills without using up my brownie point time system at home. This year is indeed going to be my year out. 'T' called on sailing. I think everyone should take time out otherwise it all does become 'another day at the office' . <br> i am taking a year out for the reason of potential jadedness with the slow ood boats here, but also two personal reaons if you like. <br> firstly this winter i actually lost some weight! This trending will just be a blip if i do the series, some weekend events, and of course all the time teaching at the sailing school . Now i can be out on my bike or up in the hills without using up my brownie point time system at home. <br> the other reason is i am a little in my cave and feel i need my own project in terms of a boat, and being part time crew with the somewhat dull locals doesn't rub anymore. Heaven can wait.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
end of season
Well the season has ended, and so also I have to call "T" finally for that famous year out I have been discussing since about 2001.
I just finally need a rest so I can use time getting fitter and building up reserves to come back with a refreshed attitude in 2012.
Next year though there is the EM in Melges 24 in Norway, which is tempting, but there is not point what-so-ever in doing it unless I get an invitaion to a boat which is training up to the event. Which is not going to happen.
Short of maybe getting a loan of a local OD or taking up dinghies again; I will wait and see and committ to nothing and not bother to stress myself up about who-to sail with or which team to get together.
What I am saying is that unless it is laid on a plate or some fortuity comes along I am taking time out.
I just finally need a rest so I can use time getting fitter and building up reserves to come back with a refreshed attitude in 2012.
Next year though there is the EM in Melges 24 in Norway, which is tempting, but there is not point what-so-ever in doing it unless I get an invitaion to a boat which is training up to the event. Which is not going to happen.
Short of maybe getting a loan of a local OD or taking up dinghies again; I will wait and see and committ to nothing and not bother to stress myself up about who-to sail with or which team to get together.
What I am saying is that unless it is laid on a plate or some fortuity comes along I am taking time out.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Hitting The Wave
Well land lubbers hit the wall, so we must hit the wave:
Dunk! I hit it this year.
Splash! Got it all over my shirt.
I started sailing classics and this has hit me fine and good: I do worse than a new beginner! Well, they are behind us, but relatively speaking I am an idiot.
I just seem to lack the concentration and nerve to make it happen. Also I lack the energy. I was banging on the door of the wave a few years ago and knew it but just changed boats to a j109 and the team thing took us all to the heights.
I also lack going back to basics: they are small 5m affairs with a tiny sail plan really, and I should think dinghy crossed with barge characteristics: an age to accelerate or come on the wind.
At least five times we have been miles back from the start: this is our fault for not seeing that the wind has died and the usual wind disturbance of the collective fleet reduces our approach times by maybe a third to a half. It took us nearly three minutes to sail up to the line from one minute out: major phucket.
I have always been a liittle poor on starts: shy, nervous often, barging-bloody minded other times: rarely cool, calm and collected as I am trimming or tactically in all the rest of any given race.
Start is something I get nervous for because I know it is my weaknesses out of many stregnths and this just exacerbates it.
In essence the wave is just a kick back from me being conceated and over confident before: you gotta remember the basics, train to make better, and go out and do the text book stuff prestart, 5 min , 1.30 min, 1m in, 45 sec-30sec and 10 sec-gun.
Dunk! I hit it this year.
Splash! Got it all over my shirt.
I started sailing classics and this has hit me fine and good: I do worse than a new beginner! Well, they are behind us, but relatively speaking I am an idiot.
I just seem to lack the concentration and nerve to make it happen. Also I lack the energy. I was banging on the door of the wave a few years ago and knew it but just changed boats to a j109 and the team thing took us all to the heights.
I also lack going back to basics: they are small 5m affairs with a tiny sail plan really, and I should think dinghy crossed with barge characteristics: an age to accelerate or come on the wind.
At least five times we have been miles back from the start: this is our fault for not seeing that the wind has died and the usual wind disturbance of the collective fleet reduces our approach times by maybe a third to a half. It took us nearly three minutes to sail up to the line from one minute out: major phucket.
I have always been a liittle poor on starts: shy, nervous often, barging-bloody minded other times: rarely cool, calm and collected as I am trimming or tactically in all the rest of any given race.
Start is something I get nervous for because I know it is my weaknesses out of many stregnths and this just exacerbates it.
In essence the wave is just a kick back from me being conceated and over confident before: you gotta remember the basics, train to make better, and go out and do the text book stuff prestart, 5 min , 1.30 min, 1m in, 45 sec-30sec and 10 sec-gun.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Strange Season
This has been a bit of a strange season for me: no wins!
Sailing was on the back burner a while; in fact I should have cut off the gas this year, but it does provide my only social life so to speak.
The nationasl was strange; light winds with piggish, underpowered wooden classics banging the corners in often two tack beats on a 600m course.
We went so slow I reckoned glue: we were heavy blokes with older sails though.
In fact the event was a rude re-awakening to the one thing you need to do: practice and get a feel for what you are doing before you go in over confident, based on past experienced and flounder on nerves.
Also, don't stumble into racing you don't want to do. A week later and the chat was about the new sports boat the soling owners would like to buy: the sb3 is the lead runner by a country mile.
Next year I am saying "T" to the kid's sailing school, I can't teach trapeze anyway, barely do it myself, but I have to keep a little quiet on this for now.
I keep on saying a total year out, maybe next year will be since I was a bit disappointed in the social life anyhows. But it would be a year out of the local OD class which is bad; time on the water counts.
Given you don't live out in the sticks like me, and you have a healthy social life outside of sailing, then I fully recommend taking "T" : a whole season out, and then going back to some kind of learning at a school or with a patient owner or crew boss on a new boat.
Sailing was on the back burner a while; in fact I should have cut off the gas this year, but it does provide my only social life so to speak.
The nationasl was strange; light winds with piggish, underpowered wooden classics banging the corners in often two tack beats on a 600m course.
We went so slow I reckoned glue: we were heavy blokes with older sails though.
In fact the event was a rude re-awakening to the one thing you need to do: practice and get a feel for what you are doing before you go in over confident, based on past experienced and flounder on nerves.
Also, don't stumble into racing you don't want to do. A week later and the chat was about the new sports boat the soling owners would like to buy: the sb3 is the lead runner by a country mile.
Next year I am saying "T" to the kid's sailing school, I can't teach trapeze anyway, barely do it myself, but I have to keep a little quiet on this for now.
I keep on saying a total year out, maybe next year will be since I was a bit disappointed in the social life anyhows. But it would be a year out of the local OD class which is bad; time on the water counts.
Given you don't live out in the sticks like me, and you have a healthy social life outside of sailing, then I fully recommend taking "T" : a whole season out, and then going back to some kind of learning at a school or with a patient owner or crew boss on a new boat.
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